interactions between the viewer, artist, and images. In front of the screen and adjacent to the sequential thought bubbles, Piper reprised her dance from Aretha Franklin Catalysis (1972) using dance not as a critique of Western decadence or apathy but as “an idiom of communication,”3 while two sound elements met in a similarly jarring way: Piper’s recorded voice is heard reading excerpts of an article on the Cambodia crisis as “Do You Love What You Feel,” a popular Funk ballad by Rufus and Chaka Khan, is played.
At Lévy Gorvy, the installation of It’s Just Art includes a video reconstruction of the sound and image components of the performance; fifteen framed silver gelatin prints; three thought bubble collages on black paper; one framed offset poster for the performance; and one framed diagram mapping the performance’s temporal structure. Representative of the formal complexity of Piper’s work of this period, It’s Just Art examines nuanced questions of political responsibility still urgent today and the complicit positions of art in relation to structures of power and violence.
Adrian Piper, The Mythic Being, Cycle I: 6/6/70, 1974. #10 of 17, censored from The Village Voice Series. Pencil and felt tip pen on lined paper, and black and white photograph. 10” x 8” (25.4 x 20.3 cm). Private Collection. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
Here The site-specific installation Here, conceived in 2008 and realized for the first time at Lévy Gorvy, consists of three laconic statements—“I was here,” “We were here,” “We are here”— engraved in Arabic, English, and Hebrew on three adjoining walls. Presented in a uniform font, the phrases quietly assert their seemingly timeless, carved-in-stone presence against the smooth expanse of their respective grounds. Activating a complex interplay of existential absence and presence, Here speaks to the intricacies of the indexical present, implicating the viewer in the here and now and inviting mindful attention to interpersonal dynamics. Similar to the Mythic Being works and It’s Just Art, Here explores the ethical and moral dynamics of coexistence. The triangulation of English, Arabic, and Hebrew offers a subtle commentary on the entrenched ideologies of ethnic and cultural otherness that fuel contemporary violence, paranoia, and fear, while endeavoring to clear a space for mutual recognition and compassion. Language, Here reminds us, is not an innocent vehicle of expression, parallel to the presumed neutrality of the gallery’s white walls, but a series of conventions charged with politics. Positing a simultaneously inclusive and exclusive “we,” Here attunes its viewer to the dynamics of difference and similarity that both bolster bigotry and provide the means to overcome it.
Adrian Piper, The Mythic Being: Say It Like You Mean It, 1975. Silver gelatin print, oil crayon. 8″x 10″ (20.32 x 25.4 cm). Private Collection. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
About the Artist Adrian Piper (b. 1948) is a first-generation Conceptual artist who started exhibiting her artwork internationally at the age of twenty and received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1981. She taught philosophy for 30 years. Her two-volume study in Kantian metaethics, Rationality and the Structure of the Self (2013) integrates desire into reason and standard decision theory into classical predicate logic. Her mixed media installation, The Probable Trust Registry, won the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Piper’s seventh traveling retrospective, Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965-2016, will open at the Museum of Modern Art,New York, in March 2018.
Adrian Piper, The Mythic Being: Look But Don’t Touch, 1975. Silver gelatin print, oil crayon. 8″ x 10″ (20.32 x 25.4 cm). Private Collection. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin
About Lévy Gorvy Lévy Gorvy cultivates a program devoted to innovation and connoisseurship in the fields of modern, postwar, and contemporary art. Formed by Dominique Lévy and Brett Gorvy, Lévy Gorvy maintains gallery spaces at 909 Madison Avenue in New York, expanded in January 2017, and in Mayfair, London, inaugurated in 2015. The gallery fosters continued dedication to the living artists and artists’ estates it represents and pursues a robust program of exhibitions and multidisciplinary events. Lévy Gorvy produces ongoing art historical research and original scholarship, publishing exhibition catalogues, monographs, and other key publications. 909 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10021 +1 212 772 2004 22 Old Bond Street, London, W1S 4PY +44 (0)203 696 5910 www.levygorvy.com